Friend — calm down. I'm here to help, not fight.
I understand clearly now: you wa
The first thing Ethan noticed was the silence.
Not the ordinary kind—the kind that still carries birds, wind, distant life—but a silence that felt unfinished, as though the world itself was holding its breath. He lay flat on his back in the ruined orchard, staring up at a sky that looked too wide, too clean, as if something had been erased from it.
The house was gone.
Where the Walker House once stood—breathing, watching, remembering—there was now only a collapsed skeleton of stone and timber. Walls lay broken like ribs. Windows stared upward, blind and empty. No whispers crawled through the air. No shadows moved where they shouldn't.
It was over.
That was what Ethan told himself.
He tried to sit up.
Pain flared through his spine, sharp and electric. He gasped and fell back, clutching his chest. Beneath his skin, something shifted—slow, deliberate—like a second heartbeat learning its rhythm.
No.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
No more hallucinations. No more tricks.
The house was destroyed. The deal broken.
He was free.
"Then why do I still feel watched?" he whispered.
Footsteps approached.
Human footsteps.
Ethan's eyes snapped open.
Villagers stood at the edge of the orchard, forming a wide, uncertain circle. They kept their distance, faces pale, eyes filled with something between relief and fear. Old men. Women clutching shawls. A child hiding behind his mother's leg.
They stared at Ethan like he was a ghost that had decided to stay.
One man stepped forward—tall, grey-haired, eyes sharp with too much knowing.
"It's finished, isn't it?" the man asked.
Ethan swallowed. His throat felt raw, scraped hollow by screams he barely remembered making.
"I think so," he said.
The man nodded slowly. "The house stopped breathing."
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
"Then why," an old woman asked, voice trembling, "does the land still feel wrong?"
Ethan didn't answer.
Because he knew.
They helped him to his feet. The moment he stood, dizziness washed over him. The world tilted, shadows stretching too long, too eager. He steadied himself against a broken stone.
That was when he saw it.
The ruin twitched.
Just once.
No one else noticed.
Ethan's breath caught.
"You saw it, didn't you?" the grey-haired man said quietly.
Ethan turned sharply. "What?"
The man's eyes did not leave the ruins. "It doesn't leave easily. Things like that never do."
A chill crawled up Ethan's spine.
"What are you saying?"
The man finally looked at him. "That the house was never the master. Only the mouth."
That night, Ethan was taken into the village.
They gave him a bed. Food he barely touched. Water that tasted faintly metallic. People whispered outside the door, voices low, cautious, as if afraid he might hear too much.
Sleep came in fragments.
Every time he closed his eyes, he felt it—that slow breathing inside his chest, steady and patient.
At 2:17 a.m., he woke screaming.
The room was dark.
The air smelled of soil.
And someone was standing at the foot of his bed.
Ethan bolted upright.
The figure did not move.
Moonlight slipped through the window, illuminating a familiar shape—his father.
Jonathan Walker looked whole again. No veins. No decay. Just the man Ethan remembered from childhood, tired eyes and a sad, knowing smile.
"You shouldn't have left it alone," Jonathan said.
Ethan's voice shook. "You said the house was the lock."
"It was," Jonathan replied. "But locks break."
The floor creaked.
The walls breathed.
Ethan shook his head violently. "No. I destroyed it. I felt it die."
Jonathan's expression darkened. "You felt it change."
From Ethan's chest came a dull, hollow thump.
Jonathan stepped back.
"You didn't escape, son," he said softly. "You were chosen."
The figure dissolved into shadow.
The room fell silent again.
Ethan sat there until dawn, shaking.
By morning, he knew something was wrong.
Too quiet.
Too careful.
The villagers avoided his eyes. Animals refused to come near him. Dogs whimpered when he passed. A glass shattered in his hand when he picked it up, though he hadn't squeezed.
And the breathing—
It was clearer now.
Stronger.
That afternoon, Ethan returned to the ruins.
He didn't tell anyone.
The air around the collapsed house felt heavy, charged. As he stepped closer, memories pressed against his mind—faces, names, moments that were not his.
The ground beneath the ruins was cracked.
At the center, where the pit had once breathed, something remained.
A hole.
Not deep.
Not wide.
Just enough.
Ethan knelt.
Inside the hole lay something black and glistening, like a lump of wet coal. It pulsed faintly.
When he reached out—
It spoke.
Not in words.
In memory.
Ethan saw it all then.
The truth.
The thing beneath the house had never been fully contained. When the house was destroyed, it needed a new vessel. Something mobile. Something capable of memory.
A human.
A Walker.
His hands shook.
"I won't feed you," he whispered.
The thing pulsed faster.
It didn't argue.
It waited.
That night, the first disappearance happened.
A child.
Then another.
Ethan stood at the edge of the village, watching lanterns move through the darkness, listening to cries carried by the wind.
Inside his chest, something stirred.
Hungry.
Ethan clenched his fists until blood ran from his palms.
"I won't become you," he said.
The breathing answered.
Slow.
Patient.
Certain.
And far beneath the ruined land of Blackwood Hollow, something smiled—because the house was gone…
…but the haunting had learned how to walk.